Sports are a huge aspect of culture throughout the world. The 2016 Summer Olympics that took place in Brazil f Sports are a huge aspect of culture throughout the world. The 2016 Summer Olympics that took place in Brazil for example hosted over 10,500 athletes from 206 nations and dependent territories. With such a huge event as this, magnificent structures to house these games and the athletes participating are constructed. or example hosted over 10,500 athletes from 206 nations and dependent territories. With such a huge event as this, magnificent structures to house these games and the athletes participating are constructed.
While a lot of the focus at the time of these huge sporting events, such as the 2016 Summer Olympics, is put on rooting for your nation/dependent territory and specific athletes, there has also been a lot of focus on the post-event conditions of the deteriorating structures. For example, Rio, as well as Athens and Beijing, have been highlighted for how the current, post-event state of the structures that were built for the Olympic Games are now in disarray and are poorly affecting the surrounding environment and people in relation to where these structures were built.
However, the Olympic Games are not the only international competition, and deteriorating structures are not the only environmental issue that currently accompanies events of this magnitude.
The 2018 FIFA World Cup that recently took place in Russia and resulted in France’s victory, is another international competition of high magnitude. While FIFA has pledged with the UN’s Climate Neutral Now scheme to be at the state of emissions neutrality by 2050, no focus has been made to educate the fans on the harmful carbon footprint caused by textile waste that the fans themselves are contributing to.
When taking a look at the past 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil sustainability report, it is acknowledged that there were a lot of resources allocated to ensuring that awareness was raised in regards to recycling paper, metal, plastics (including PET), and glass. However, educating fans about textile waste was not occurring at the FIFA World Cup.
Many t-shirts and jerseys were created worldwide for the 2018 FIFA World Cup. While Jerseys are usually worn and kept for a very long time as they have a memorabilia aspect to them, event focused t-shirts are usually discarded after the event has concluded. The type of event t-shirts we are focusing on are ones that have event focused designs printed on them for example, “FIFA WORLD CUP RUSSIA 2018”. The designs of these t-shirts tend to look dated directly after the event has ceased. Reason being is that they have a date and an event name printed on them. This sticks that garment into a “time slot” in a way and are not usually worn to their full potential post-event as they look dated once the event has ceased.
Event focused t-shirts are not designed to be sustainable.
With fans not knowing how their purchases of World Cup attire can be either sustainable or unsustainable, depending on the designs they chose and their wearing behaviors, this can be a major problem.
Fans must either wear a t-shirt to its full potential or buy more sustainable designs that are not event-focused in order for their garment to not look dated.
How Unsustainable is a T-Shirt:
The average t-shirt emits a carbon footprint of 2,35 KG CO2 emission throughout its lifetime. If you take out the laundering, ironing, and machine drying, that same t-shirt emits 1,13 KG CO2. To put this into perspective, each t-shirt that emits 1,13 KG CO2 into the atmosphere emits the same amount of CO2 that occurs by driving a bus for 20km. According to FIFA, 3,429,873 was the total number of fans that attended the 2014 FIFA World Cup. For example, if each fan bought an event focused t-shirt that was immediately discarded post-event, without being worn to its full potential, the level of CO2 that is emitted into the atmosphere from the waste of those tees is the equivalent of driving a bus around the circumference of the Earth 1,711 times.
What can the Fashion Industry do to help:
Fashion companies can help negate this problem easily by utilizing sustainable designs in the creation of their t-shirts. For example, Superdry had released a limited edition collection of World Cup t-shirts for fans that don’t look dated and are timeless. The reason this design is sustainable is because the designers had taken the focus off the event of the 2018 FIFA World Cup and instead focused on creating t-shirts that could be worn for the 2018 FIFA World Cup as well as other events by focusing on the teams.
It is evident that in order for FIFA to reach emissions neutrality by 2050 in relation to The World Cup, there will have to be resources allocated in order to further educate fans about textile waste. Having fashion companies on board with the idea of creating garments that are not event focused will also be very beneficial as well.